The family that owns Hong Kong pro-establishment newspaper Sing Tao Daily switched the registered business address of some of their companies from the same one used by their main media outlet after almost two years in which they appeared to be in breach of their lease conditions at a government-owned site for news and media organizations.

King Field (H.K.) Limited, controlled by Sing Tao News Corp. Chairman Charles Ho, and Spectrum 28, of which Ho’s son Kent is registered as a director, changed their company address from Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in August, an Apple Daily investigation reveals. King Field filed its new address on Aug. 10, the day that Apple Daily’s offices at the same industrial estate were raided by around 200 police officers and founder Jimmy Lai reportedly accused of fraud for violating the terms of its lease.

Company Registry filings show that King Field’s new registered address is at Lee Po Chun Chambers in Central, which belongs to an accounting firm. Spectrum 28 filed on Aug. 1 to change its address to Kowloon Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, which belongs to another accounting firm.

Both companies registered Sing Tao’s Tseung Kwan O site as their address on Dec. 4, 2017, the same month the Sing Tao group moved to the Tseung Kwan O site, according to a report published on Dec. 31, 2017, by the group’s East Weekly publication.

Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate is owned by the government and managed by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corp. According to a lease inked between Sing Tao and Science and Technology Parks, the site is leased to the group for “printing newspapers, magazines, and books and for the purpose, terms and particulars specified in the Grantee’s Proposal Form.”

However, it appears that neither King Field nor Spectrum 28 are in the business of news and media publication. King Field “operates as an investment company,” according to Bloomberg’s database. The company did not specify the type of business it conducts in registry filings since it was established in 1997. The records show that in 2016 the company earned more than HK$90 million (US$11.6 million) from the HK$110 million sale of five units in a building in Chai Wan that it bought 10 years earlier.

Spectrum 28 listed a BVI company named Sheen Profit Holdings as a founder in 2015. Kent Ho was listed as a director of the company in 2017.

Spectrum 28 is “a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm focused on investing in companies disrupting long-standing industries,” according to a news release in 2016. Former Goldman Sachs banker Kent Ho told Tatler a year later that his ambition was to bring Hong Kong and Silicon Valley together, and that the company’s investment portfolio spanned from digital health and genomics to retail, fintech and hospitality related to big data and software development.

Kent Ho has also been sitting on the board of Science and Technology Parks since 2017.

In a Legislative Council paper submitted by Science and Technology Parks in March, the company said applicants who wished to lease a site it manages can only operate businesses that have been agreed between the tenant and the park. Sub-letting sites was not allowed, it said. Science and Technology Parks has yet to respond to Apple Daily’s inquiries.

“I don’t know any of these. You ask the company. I’m not handling this,” Charles Ho, who is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and was vocal in support of the recently imposed national security law, said by telephone when asked about the changes of address by Apple Daily. He then hung up.

In addition to Sing Tao and Apple Daily, Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate is host to many news, media and communications-related companies, including Television Broadcasts and Mei Ah Entertainment Group.

The offices of Apple Daily were raided on Aug. 10 by around 200 police officers as Next Digital founder Jimmy Lai, his two sons and several executives of the group that publishes the pro-democracy newspaper were arrested on suspicion of violating the national security law. Beijing mouthpiece Ta Kung Pao also reported on that day that Lai was also accused of fraud in relation to using Apple Daily’s premises for other companies and so violating the terms of the lease.

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